te72

I've written letters to both my congressmen. Unfortunately, both of them seem to be firmly in the pockets of the telecom industry, so they won't hear my views over the dollars stuffed into their ears. Historically speaking, anything that is truly beneficial to the US people, that wouldn't cost someone else the fruit of their labor (NOT talking about "potential profits" here), is swept under the rug or legislated out. The repeal of the Title II regulations of 2015 is nothing short of a handout to the ISPs and will result in worse service, higher costs, and a poorer user experience. Ajit Pai is a lawyer, he's not dumb. He is however, doing this for his former employer, Verizon. Whose interests do you REALLY think he has in mind here? I'll give you a hint... if you can't figure that riddle out, you're about to get screwed. Two things ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT happen in regards to the internet: -ISP throttling speeds to ANY website. It is censorship, a violation of our first amendment right to free speech. No matter how disgusting or vile my beliefs may seem, I have a right to them, as do you. I may disagree with what you have to say or what you choose to believe, but I WILL support your right to your beliefs. -Selective treatment of ANY website. This is simply unethical business practice, and will stifle innovation. If I want to start a website or streaming service, but can't compete with existing major players because of shady business practices, that is not due to a lack of merit on my part. My website may be fantastic, but you'll never bother with it if it takes too long to load... ISPs must act as a maintainer of the lines, NOT as a gatekeeper of information. Normally I'm not a big supporter of government regulation, but in the case of the telecom industry, there is a disturbing lack of competition. Lack of competition is bad for the consumer. Again, whose interests are really at the forefront of this argument?

Interesting topic here... I'd be curious of examples as well. Looking at my own collection, the vast majority of my games from the PS1/2 era are from Japanese developers. There are definitely some really solid and fun games that are western developed, but I wonder, are there really any genres that are missing from Japanese developer portfolios that western developers have filled in the gap? Only thing that MIGHT come to mind would be sports games, at least in the US, sports are quite huge here.

Congrats twiztor. I saw a sale on the Switch with BotW for $360. Have some priorities to take care of financially that I can't really just jump on that, but... it is tempting at that price. Winter is on its way though, and that is usually when I get my gaming on for the year...

Very well said. Call me crazy, but I always thought love and peace was a pretty good way to go about your interactions with people. I can say, it's genuinely cool to see people call folks out in public when they have it coming. "Hey, you're being an asshole, why don't you dial it back a notch before you say something you'll regret to people you love?" You speak of the line... That's the trouble with comedy. Some people have a line that is very close to what some would consider a lack of a sense of humor. Others? Some fall so far to the other side of that line, that you wonder if they have boundaries at all. I fall a lot closer to that second scenario, though I lack even the slightest bit of malice in my heart, I will laugh at anything I find funny. Perhaps that is where the line is... the line is determined by malice. If you say something as a joke, or do something as a joke, and have malice as your inspiration? You're the asshole. Tough to find that line sometimes, I'll admit. Any sort of assault or bullying? Fuck off, that's not cool in my book.

I was afraid that might be the case there as well. Most unfortunate indeed. Talking about it is as good a place to start in order to right that wrong... Was watching a show recently that discussed how rampant it is in India. I wonder if population density leads to ambivalence?

I'm pretty sure there's an "oh Japan..." meme out there somewhere, no? Pervy though it may seem, so long as it is all in good fun and nobody's assaulted as a result, Japanese culture toward this sort of thing is rather entertaining.

That Might & Magic setup sounds pretty cool, kinda like Link To The Past, with the light / dark world. It's been a weird year for me, super busy out in the garage, so I've hardly played anything this year. Little bit of Gran Turismo 6, might have been all so far. Oh, wait, no... I did go back and play some Moraff's World early in the year. DOS man, DOS...

I would own a portable again if someone else did the driving on long trips, or I had decent periods of downtime that I wasn't at home. As is, just doesn't really fit my lifestyle very much anymore. Kinda funny though, what I've seen of portable games in recent years lines up with the games that I like to play pretty well, so... perhaps I've been misguided to not pay more attention to the DS family of systems. Really funny to hear kids talk in surprise of home console Mario games! When I was their age, there were maybe TWO non-console Mario games.

Nailed it here. I firmly believe that had this game not made the jump to the PS, we might not even have had a PS2, much less any of the other systems that Sony made since. Up until then, it had some good games, but not many that were selling the system. Tekken, perhaps, Namco was doing some solid arcade ports at the time, but still... FF7 was the first big system seller for Sony.

Haven't owned a Nintendo portable since the original GBA, so yeah, had no idea about the 3DS game!

The contrast of the graphics was merely a limitation of the hardware, unfortunately. Still... at the time? I really appreciated everything. The atmosphere and music just meshed so well. I had finished Wild Arms the prior summer as well. That game actually had a bigger chasm in graphics, with the 3d battles with the 2d overworld and dungeon maps, but I still loved that one too. As far as the modern graphics... so long as they lend to the atmosphere of the game, I'll give it a chance. I think it's what the developers would have done had they done if the tech was able to keep up. Although... it was rather manga-inspired in the cut scenes. It's funny, having spent soooo much time as a kid trying to beat the optional super bosses in the game. Finally beat Emerald through attrition and a good defensive strategy. I don't believe I ever managed to beat Ruby. If I did, it didn't leave much of an impression on me for whatever reason. Watching people who know what they're doing beat them is almost an art form. You should be able to find video of that N64 prototype if you poke around a bit, it was neat to watch. FF7 borrowed SO much from FF6 that it isn't even funny, yet made it seem fresh all the same. Much as I love 6, I think 7 was able to better convey characterization, if only due to the 3d models. Plus... the battle system was a lot more entertaining to watch, again, due to the increased horsepower of the system.

Thread title pretty much sums it up. The game that popularized the RPG genre in the west, is now two whole decades old. I still have issues of EGM covering the development of it, from 1996. I'm listening to the soundtrack as I type this (grooving to "Oppressed People" at the moment), and it still holds up really nicely. I know it will be a while before we get to play it, but man... I'm excited for the remake. I'll be buying a PS4 specifically for this game, if I haven't already bought one by then for some other game. So what about you? I know it's a divisive game these days, and to those discontent with the game for whatever reason, I still highly recommend you search out a Let's Play by a fellow named Elentor on the somethingawful LP archive. As for me, I think it was the world map reveal that really solidified how much I enjoyed this game. You go through all of the Midgar section of the game, this massive, diverse city, only to find out that it is but ONE city in the world that you're suddenly free to explore. Blew my mind as a kid.

I can't get over how Nintendo hasn't made a Pilotwings game since 1996... Consider how much fun, how much innovation they could have brought to the table with their newer systems. I always liked the short, challenging nature of the series. Made repeated failure until you got it right an odd sort of fun...

To me, it's always been pretty darned satisfying, the "click" of inserting a cartridge, the slide of the power button, just... how it all felt. Purely a tactile thing, but it adds something for me that I have a difficult time describing. Won't get that with the mini here, but at least I'd be using an SNES controller rather than a PS style or Xbox controller... Plus, I never owned an SNES, it's the only main console of Nintendo that I never owned.

Three things that you might not be considering: -These are 100% legal, no gray area involved as far as ethics are concerned. Matters to some, I suppose. -Not everybody has the skill set or confidence to tinker with computers. I've torn apart just about every aspect of my Supra and put it back together, yet I would still have a learning curve ahead of me to build an emulator machine. -First part controllers tend to be pretty nice... That said, you do make a solid point. I'm sure that Nintendo's foolish marketing is causing a spike in Pi sales.

I think 10 million would be reasonable enough to satiate most demand. If Nintendo wanted to create some customer goodwill, perhaps include the games that were on the NES Classic on the SNES version. Doubt they would do that, that would be doing right by your customer. I want to give them my money, I really do. But if I can't buy their products for at or less than MSRP, I can either wait or do without. They have to meet the customer halfway here...

How would you prevent scalping for something like this? I've seen some unique approaches with concerts, but those are for a physical venue entry, not an item you buy. Think directly from Nintendo, one per credit card or address?

Well, that just serves to remind us why the SNES was one of the best systems ever... looks fun!

I see what you mean. Back then, I was in the same boat, five bucks would make my day in an arcade, I really had to learn how to stretch those quarters as much as possible. What I was trying to say referred to the modern time, in that some of us are fortunate enough to have expendable income, and could, in theory at least, dump quarter after quarter into a machine until we beat it. You make a fair point though, in that it was usually about determination and attrition back then, as well as a pile of allowance money, rather than outright skill. I don't know if I ever beat an arcade game, apart from possibly SF2, due to skill.

Was Battletoads anywhere near as hard as the NES version? I'd consider beating them in MAME as legitimate. You can always dump as many quarters as you want into an arcade machine... not that much different.

I've always understood it to be like translation work. If you're fluent in more than one language, you should be able to act as a medium for people who don't understand each other, right? Except, it takes a LOT of brain power and nuance to be able to do it well. I suspect the situation is the same with a computer. It can understand what you want it to do, it's just very brain power intensive to do non-native processing. I believe the example I was reading about recently was doing perfect emulation of Super Mario World. What the SNES was doing with ease was requiring a MASSIVE amount of PC power to get the exact same result, and this is 25 years later, technology wise.

I can't speak for the rest of you, but the last time I nearly made an impulse purchase involving video games, was for a Wii U. I saw the controller, it was huge for the time, novel, and perhaps most importantly, innovative. The PS4 and XB1 had just came out, but I was only genuinely interested in this new Nintendo... thing. ...then I remembered that I still have a Wii that barely got played. So, I'm part of that declining sales trend as well.

You know Jake, it's posts like this that I both appreciate on a technical level, and causes me to wonder if you're not yourself an AI haha. Mostly kidding bud. In seriousness, I recently read an article on someone describing the difficulty in emulating Pong at the mechanical level. I guess the original version of the game wasn't how we think of games, as digital programs, but was rather a mechanical display of light. The computing power to reproduce Pong perfectly was obscene, and we're talking about perhaps the most simple game ever made. This led into brief descriptions of why perfect emulation of more modern games may take a LOT longer to accomplish. Now that I think about it... I wonder if part of that info came from a thread on here? It was either on here or in Retro Magazine, most likely.

Sonic 3 was a milestone game. Just like the Mario series, Sonic continued on, but 3 (and the expansion Sonic & Knuckles) was the pinnacle of the series, much like Super Mario World was the pinnacle of the Mario series, in my opinion. That said, I had almost as much fun with Sega's Crazy Taxi. That game was just right, at just the right time for me.

Shame to see the BoF series come to a mobile demise. The premise doesn't sound half bad, if you ask me... Just read the outline of BoF5, and even that one sounds like I missed out.